


And He Was Only Ever Kissed By Thieves

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy Industrial, Boats and Ships, Cooking, M/M, Original Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:50:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4087594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About cooks, sailors, soldiers, thieves, bastards, and liars- a tale of someone who has lived long enough be all of these things but one, and someone who is only the other, but knows better than to take the rest too seriously.</p><p>Written on a whim. Eight thousand words of the most self-serious idiot on the high seas and a kid whose life skills appear to include peeling potatoes and not a hell of a lot else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And He Was Only Ever Kissed By Thieves

**Author's Note:**

> If you are looking for suave Levi, he is not here. He has never even seen this work. This is the antithesis of suave Levi. I have met kindergarteners with more game than this Levi.
> 
> Fair warning.
> 
> Edit: In a fit of cosmic irony, I now work as a dishwasher at a restaurant and my job does, in fact, involve peeling potatoes.

He did not go to market on Days of Rest.

On Days of Toil, only landed sailors and those who worked in the houses of the idle rich could find the time to walk its narrows, and so the market would always be smaller.

A Toilday market always built itself into being before Toil’s Break, its merchants early risen in the hopes of turning a few coins from the pocket of a sleepless nightwatch or desperate labourer unable to wait for his rightful Day of Rest, and in the chill of the morning, the air would be crisp, sharp with salt from the harbour and wood smoke from the embered hearths of a city not yet woken.

Before the city’s workplace flues began a day spent weaving another coal-dark shade over the fledgling grey of the sky, before the young masters stirred from the downy pillows of their drunken beds to send their father’s maids for more mead or meat or wine, the market would be quiet, the soles of his shoes too loud on the flagstone, and every settling plank or slap of water against the hull of a ship at anchor would somehow sound sordid, like sins heard through the wood of a lodginghouse door.

On Days of Rest, there was no rest to be had in the marketplace, or even in the city as a whole. The siren’s call of unspent money glutted the market narrows with vendors until the houses of their wares forced the light from the city’s sky more completely than coalshade ever had.

On Days of Rest, the market sprawled far beyond the market square, into streets of industry and residence alike, and built upon itself until walking on the flagstone meant hearing the creak of someone else’s shoes on hasty slats above his head, always close enough to touch with outstretched fingers.

A Restday market leaned hard against the city’s walls and windows as it crowed for buyers and balanced itself on its own shoulders, and the customers that came out to meet it choked the air with heat until the narrows sweltered.

He did not go to market on Days of Rest.

Not if he could help it.

Today, it could not be helped.

“Do you think I’ll be able to find more Southern Gullshade, Levi?” Hanji asked him, too at ease for someone whose animated hands had so little space to move. “I haven’t seen the man I bought the last batch from since the Fallrest of Fourth Mare’s Ebb, but I don’t know if he’s been taken by plague or misfortune or if I just keep missing him- you know, there must be a better way to organize this place-”

Levi grunted in acknowledgement, too busy watching the sinuous movements of a dirty-faced child to pay real attention. Her hands were quick, practiced, and when she made to bump against him, fingers curling almost naturally into the lining of his coat as if to catch herself, he shifted his palm against the hilt of the blade at his hip and caught her gaze.

It was a split-second transaction, one without words or negotiation- he kept his mouth shut but didn’t look away, and when his coat swung back against his chest, the inside pocket was still heavy with coin. She didn’t nod before slipping away into the crowd to look for a less attentive target.

She didn’t even blink.

 _‘She’ll live to see twenty if a man’s rot doesn’t take her,’_ he decided. Not many of the Fatherless did.

He’d know.

“Levi, are you listening?” Hanji asked, glancing over their shoulder at him. “I really think I might be onto something here- just imagine: rather than having the late-arriving merchants pay the ground-level stall owners a percentage of their Restday sales to allow the settling of beams and ladders on the roofs of their structures, the city could have the Builders put up a temporary scaffold in the square and rent out spaces within it to the merchants instead,” they explained, nearly striking a passing man in the face as they gestured.

“Also for a percentage of their Restday sales,” Levi finished incredulously. It wasn’t quite a question.

By all accounts, the smile that earned him was completely genuine. “Exactly. Think about it,” they rattled, eyes frenzied but distant in a way he was all too familiar with, “if the city had records of which merchants were renting spaces in the Restday scaffold, and where, not only would they know exactly how tall they’d have to build it, they could make a map of reference for buyers to better know what wares were available and where to find the merchants they were looking for.” They paused, but only for a moment. “I mean, they could even organize merchants by level according to their wares. Can you imagine?”

“I can imagine some of these hawkers refusing to pay tenancy and setting up outside like they always do, yes,” he answered cynically. A nearby merchant shot him a cold look. Hanji made a face at them and then frowned at the truth of it.

“I wish you wouldn’t call them hawkers, Levi, but you do have a point- you’d have to make selling outside the square punishable somehow, and then you’d be at risk of having the city shut out by the local merchants’ guild.” They glanced back at him, face thoughtful. “You’d have less collapses, though, and it’d be easier to police.” Quiet, just long enough to let his mind start to wander. “And I’m sure you remember the Springrest Fire of Twelfth Hen’s Flood.”

He did remember the fire.

The foolishness of lighting the narrows with oil lanterns was a lesson a lot of people had died to make remembered, and one which none of the rest would soon forget.

“Twelfth Cock’s Flood,” he corrected automatically, realizing too late that they were being characteristically immature. “Flood years are always named after the male of the ruling family’s totem,” he continued, stubbornly ignoring their snickering.

They already knew. He knew they did. They were the one who’d first explained it to him.

“Personally, I can’t wait to have a ruling family with a totem hound on an Ebb year,” he admitted.

“Oh, did I not tell you? Unfortunately, Ebb years don’t have to be named after the female of the totem’s species- they can also be named after the animal’s young. It’ll probably just end up being the year of Whelp’s Ebb.”

He frowned, discontented. “I think I’m finally starting to agree with your opinion on the unfairness of the Ebb and Flood system,” he said, making them laugh. 

The two of them had just begun to settle into the sort of companionable silence that usually preceded another of Hanji’s speculative rants when they stopped so suddenly that Levi nearly found himself sandwiched between their back and the person behind him.

“Why in the hell-”

Hanji shushed him, body tense and face turned upwards. “Did you hear that?”

He’d barely manage to ask what it was that he was supposed to have heard when they began shouldering their way towards a ladder. By the time he’d managed to get up it behind them, they were already vanishing up another ladder, gone to the third level.

When the third yielded no sign of them, he followed his instincts and scaled a ladder to the fourth, and final, level of the Restday market.

Sunlight seared the backs of his eyes- with the factories at Rest, the grey of morning had molted into brilliant blue, only the horizon over the sea edged in whorls of misty white. He blinked away tears, trying to squint past both brightness and afterimages for any sign of his lost companion.

The perilous fourth level of the market was largely open, populated sparsely by late-coming foreign merchants who lay their wares around them on carpet or cloth as they waited for buyers to climb upwards in search of a much-needed breeze.

One of them was watching him appraisingly from under the shade of a weighted canvas tent. Past it, he glimpsed a familiar flash of auburn hair.

“What the _hell_ could you have heard from all the way over there?” he muttered, hoisting himself the rest of the way up and running after them.

By the time he’d almost caught up with them, they’d already stopped at the edge of a small crowd, and before he could do more than grab them in anticipation of telling them in colourful terms what he thought of them taking off without warning or explanation, he realized what they were looking at.

He heard someone murmur,

“What the _fuck?”_

and barely registered it as his own voice.

It was a boy.

 _“That’s right, gentle citizens of the land and sailors of the coast, you saw it first: a Muse, harvested ripe from the shores of the Vikar Gulf,”_ a small, roundish man on the edge of a very large platform was yelling over the clamour.

The boy didn’t look younger than seventeen, but he couldn’t be older than twenty-three, and the wildness of his eyes left Levi with no doubts as to why he’d been gagged and bound to a post.

 _“They always say you can only court the bringer of inspiration- well, now you know that’s just a lie,”_ the merchant on the platform boasted. _“No more waiting on the favour of fate to raise your household from merely rich to properly respectable- it is_ art _that separates the distinguished father from his unrefined neighbour, and you can own the palette that makes every brushstroke a masterpiece, the inkwell that makes every touch of pen to paper leave words that’ll make grown men weep-”_

The more he listened, the more completely he forgot about his hand on Hanji’s shoulder.

He forgot his tremendous dislike of the Restday market.

He forgot the brightness of the day, the colours and shapes at the edges of his vision- forgot everything but the blood in his ears, the acrid taste of bile in his throat, and the rage and fear in the eyes of the boy on the platform.

“You do know,” he said, very evenly, as he shouldered his way through the crowd, “that selling slaves is forbidden by the laws of the state. Right?”

He was very dimly aware of some of the savvier spectators starting to disperse, sensing trouble beginning to brew.

Up close, he could see the merchant’s face was red and damp from the exertion of raising his voice to be heard. Levi could feel his own neck prickling as the breeze cooled his sweat. He’d hardly noticed it, but then, the swelter of too many people packed too close wasn’t much different than what he was used to.

It just stank more.

“Muses are not qualified by the law as being born in ownership of their personhood,” he hissed, eyebrows furrowed. “Look what you’ve done- _a thousand apologies for the interruption and many thanks for your patience, dear patrons of the arts-”_

Levi wrinkled his nose, leaning away as though it might reduce the man’s volume. “That’s not a Muse, that’s boy- a child,” he snarled, feeling a thrill of cold gratification when the members of the crowd still lingering nearby started to murmur amongst themselves uncertainly. “Can you _prove_ this boy is a Muse?”

The merchant on the platform went red for reasons he suspected had nothing to do with exertion. “How _dare_ you, I am a-”

“Actually,” he interrupted, placing a hand on the hilt of his blade, “I think you might be right: I do feel inspired.” He turned his head a little to the side, looking at him through one eye, like a bird deciding whether or not to pursue a mouse. “You know, they say butchery’s considered an art in the north.”

His face went from red to white in an instant.

Levi could see the man trying to decide if he was bluffing. His eyes darted nervously away.

“The first two levels have the highest priority when it comes to security,” Levi told him softly. “Do you think they’d make it to you in time?”

He backed away and bolted for the ladder. Levi watched him go.

He could feel the boy’s wild eyes on him.

“Hanji,” he called, “I need your knife.”

***

Even after he’d cut the gag from his mouth, the boy was quiet.

All through the four levels of the market, across the formidable length of the dock, and down the hatch that led below the deck of Hanji’s ship, the boy said nothing.

He never tried to run, but he was always watching- expectant, careful.

After an hour of idle threats and less-idle insults, he’d finally managed to stem the flow of Hanji’s questions and send them away. In their absence, the air felt weighty and charged, like the hour before a storm.

He waited for the boy to say something for a long time before saying something himself.

The first question he asked him was not,

“Who are you?”

or,

“What do they call you?”

It was just,

“Are you hungry?”

The way the boy’s eyes widened and lips parted told him that it hadn’t been what he’d been expecting to hear.

And that he did understand tongue common to the land, which he hadn’t been sure of.

Levi eyed him appraisingly.

“You eat meat?”

Levi watched him wince as he swallowed against a dry throat, no doubt tickled unpleasantly by the humid air of the galley, and noticed his pupils dilate just slightly. He studied them for a moment before deciding it wasn’t enough.

He’d seen it proven many times that a hungry man in a strange land would set his survival above his scruples and eat what he was given, knowing too well the offense it might give his gods.

Levi could not blame a man for that, but he could take pity on him.

He’d already straightened from his crouch and begun scrutinizing his store of preserves when he first heard him speak.

“Yeah.”

The word sounded a bit rusty, too old to have come from such a young mouth, like he hadn’t spoken in so long his voice was starting to fall into the Long Rest before the rest of him. Levi paused with his hand on a jar of cooked and sugared apple mash- it was an afterthought, left over from his other projects, but he’d been thinking the sweetness of it might ease the boy’s throat- and looked down at him.

“Yeah?” he repeated. “You’ll eat meat or you’d rather have meat, which is it?”

Without moving from his seat on the galley’s peeling stool, the boy nodded, arms folded over his stomach.

Levi waited for a moment for him to speak again and then sighed, biting back the urge to tell him it hadn’t been a yes or no question.

He set the mash on the counter instead of back in the cupboard- they’d been at sea for months and hadn’t yet settled into any major harbour for longer than a day or so, so the pickings were slim- and reached for the smoked cuts hanging by the stove.

His first thought was to offer the boy some of the fresher jerky he had on hand, but as he was holding it out, he saw the boy’s cracked lips and shadowed eyes and thought better of it.

“Wait,” he grunted, withdrawing his hand and wincing at the look of confusion and betrayal it earned him. “If you don’t have some water first, you won’t be able to swallow something as dry as this.”

He took the water he was offered with just as much zeal as Levi had expected. He weighed the usefulness of telling him to slow down.

If he threw up the water, more was near at hand, but Levi would still be the one cleaning up after him.

After the slap of water against the inside of the canteen started to signal it was more empty than it was full, he placed his hand over the mouth of it, pulling it away from the boy’s mouth.

“If you drink too much, you’ll fill your stomach with water and throw up any food I give you,” Levi told him, prying the canteen from his fingers and handing him a strip of jerky. He considered the mash again before picking it up. “If you can stand to pace yourself, I’ll mix the cuts with some of this to soften them- it might not taste like much, but it’ll make them easy to get down. Last time we made port, I helped a farmer’s wife butcher and cure her stock,” he mused, “and she paid me in apples, so apples and mutton or old beef are all I have to give you.”

He could feel the weight of the boy’s eyes on his back as he worked.

“Is this your ship?”

Levi glanced back at him. “No, it’s Hanji’s,” he answered. “The one I was with before. They’re determined to get too close to every plant and animal on land and sea until they’re killed by one, but a good ship and enough money will convince most sailors anything is a sound business practice.” He considered the softening, increasingly sticky meat doubtfully. “This is my kitchen, though.”

He thought he caught the tail end of a smile directed at him as him turned around, and he knew the tension in those shoulders had loosened considerably.

For all his doubts, as soon as he relinquished the bowl, its contents were disappearing just as surely as if they’d been cooked for the gentry, not awkwardly poured together by a galley cook with embarrassingly barren cupboards.

He leaned against the counter and watched the boy lick his fingers clean, knowing his enthusiasm was born of hunger but oddly gratified by it nonetheless.

When he moved to wipe the beading sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm, hands tacky with mash and grainy with salt, Levi remembered the heat of the market and frowned. He barely had the chance to start asking before he was interrupted.

“Do you like it?” It was barely a mumble.

Levi stared at him. “Like what?”

“Cooking on a ship,” he clarified.

Levi considered him with some bemusement. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.” He chewed the words for a moment, trying to decide if he felt conversational. “On land, the ones who can pay a cook are the ones who complain if their meal doesn’t look like it should be painted by their sons or daughters before they eat it,” he explained. “Sailors don’t care what food looks like, and in my mind, if you’re going to cook a good meal, it should look like shit and taste like art.” He looked away, a little bothered by the remnants of food clinging to the boy’s face. “And there’s something to be said for the challenge of working with limited ingredients. It’s more rewarding.”

Again, that weighty gaze.

“I’m Eren,” he said suddenly.

Levi looked at him, startled. “Oh?”

His eyes were as wild as they had always been, but in that moment, they reminded him less of a starving animal and more of a cat that had taken to basking in his window when he’d lived ashore.

“I used to help my mother cook,” Eren told him.

Levi eyed him dubiously. “I’m sure Hanji would be thrilled, but you’d be my apprentice and I can’t pay you, boy. Unless you’re willing to work for nothing but food and board-”

“Yeah,” Eren said decisively. “I’ll do it. I’ll sleep with the apples if you want me to.”

The comment surprised a laugh out of him. “They’re all dried, jarred, eaten or rotten by now, so I’m not sure how you expect to do that,” he droned, “and don’t you want to go home? I was under the impression you were kidnapped.”

Eren’s burgeoning smile went sour. “They didn’t leave me a home to go back to.”

Levi closed his eyes for a moment and then nodded, keeping his face neutral.

“Fine,” he said, “but you’re not sleeping in the damn hold where I can’t see you sneaking bites from the supply. If you want to work in the kitchen, you’ll sleep in the kitchen, like me.”

***

Hanji’s excitement tended to be audible and difficult to avoid hearing of, and so the rumour had gone around the whole of the crew by the second week of their voyage.

He pointed his ladle threateningly at yet another curious sailor trying to peek in at his apprentice. It probably didn’t help that the boy seemed more than happy to spend all of his time cloistered in the very back of the galley and only left to use the ship’s head, making him something of a mystery to most.

“For the last time, I am not hiding a damned Muse in my kitchen,” he yelled, hurling an uncooked potato at the door. “You thick-headed, gullible boobs are the reason someone thought he could convince people to empty their pockets over the son of a cook!”

Eren made an inquisitive sound where he sat peeling potatoes in the corner. “What does my mother being a cook have to do with it?”

Levi shot him an impatient look. “If you don’t know, how hasn’t Hanji explained this to you? They talk enough, I can’t see how they would have forgotten to.”

Eren’s expression told him in no uncertain terms how overwhelming and incomprehensible he found most of Hanji’s informative rants.

He sighed. “I’ll keep it simple: a Muse is almost never born to a family without name and riches. To the maid of a lord or a particularly well-kept whore? Sure. Sometimes,” he rattled briskly, “which is exactly why the rich wait until after the birth to decide whether or not to toss out a bastard’s mother. A Muse has to be born to a woman with some sort of cultivated talent, and farmer’s wives and factory workers just don’t have the time to waste on painting or poetry or dance- I don’t know how it goes where you come from, but on these coasts, when you do hear about a common-born Muse, the mother usually turns out to be the sort of person who sings while she works, and a richer family will buy her child for the benefit of their own.”

“What? But-” Eren started, eyebrows furrowing. Levi raised a hand to stop him.

“A Muse’s influence is strongest around artists of the same trade as their mother,” he pre-empted, “but they don’t do much good to a mother with no connections and no time to pursue a life as an artist between being poor, having a husband and taking care of six other children. And according to Hanji, having a Muse around at all will still stop the inkwells from going dry, keep the paint smooth, and guarantee you don’t forget the word you were looking for to describe your equally vapid and piss-brained lover,” he drawled. “But in any case, you’re not a Muse for the same reason I’m not a Muse: my mother was a whore, and having me around never inspired anyone to pay her enough to feed both of us,” he said casually, ignoring the bitter taste of the memory. “And as much as I’m sure your mother would agree with me in considering cooking an art all of its own, I’ve never heard of a cook keeping a Muse between his knives and his spices.”

Eren laughed at that, just barely avoiding slicing open his thumb with the potato knife.

Levi took a moment to marvel at how bright the sound made his crowded little galley seem- how quickly the work went with help, how little the listing of the ship mattered now that he had someone to go down the hatch into the hold for supplies while he watched the stove.

Eren’s bright eyes and dark skin made the smoke-blackened metal of his stove and flue seem rich, somehow, rich and purposeful.

Levi looked at him and considered, very suddenly, that he was the happiest he had been in a very long time.

The moment was lost to the sound of another curious sailor creaking the floorboards outside his kitchen.

“For the last _damned time-“_

***

He’d always preferred sleeping on the ground to sleeping in a hammock- old instincts meant the lack of a solid barrier against his back kept him stirring awake at every board that creaked above him or coal that shifted in the embers of his stove.

He’d had to bully Eren into taking it. He hadn’t been able to convince him it wasn’t a kindness, just a matter of practicality.

The way Eren smiled at him over the edge of it every time he caught him looking was strangely knowing, and for some reason, it embarrassed him.

Tonight, as he lay with his head pillowed on empty canvas and his back to the wall, he stirred to the sound of Eren leaving his hammock.

He assumed at first that it was to visit the head, and kept his eyes closed and his breathing steady in the hopes of slipping back into sleep, but things took a strange turn when Eren lay down beside him, barely an arm’s length away. He could feel his stare- for all the weeks that had past, that gaze never grew less weighty.

He was sure he’d have been roused by the proximity if Eren had lain beside him before, so he had to assume the impulse was new.

Uneasy and at a loss for what to do, he continued to feign sleep.

For what felt like a very long time, Eren just lay there, looking at him, until finally returning to his hammock.

When his breathing slowed, Levi opened his eyes and stared at the shape of him through the gloom.

It would become a habit of Eren’s. Levi pretended not to know.

***

Not quite three months into their voyage, Eren tried to kiss him while he was sleeping.

Eren’s mouth was soft, the kiss chaste, and judging by the stillness of the air, Levi had a strong suspicion he was holding his breath.

Levi considered this to be well over the line of what he was willing to pretend to be asleep for.

When Eren’s lips left his own, he didn’t even bother opening his eyes, just murmured,

“If I wasn’t already awake, I would be after that,”

at which point Eren scrambled away from him with all the noisy urgency of a fleeing rat.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m _sorry-”_ he was chanting from somewhere across the galley when Levi sat up with a groan.

“Before I was a ship’s cook, I was a part of the Tide Militia, and before that, I was… well,” he told the dark shape crouching halfway behind a barrel. Straining his eyes, he could tell Eren had the lower half of his face covered by his hands. “I’m not sure exactly what it is you’re after, but I wake up if you so much as breathe too loud, so I think you might have better luck asking me than hoping I’m asleep.”

Eren made a horrified sound through his fingers. “So all this time, you-”

He grunted in confirmation, stretching the stiff muscles of his neck. “Knew what you were doing? Not at all. I still don’t know what you think you were trying to do. But I knew you were doing it.”

“Why didn’t you…?”

Levi squinted at him. “Why didn’t I do what? Hit you for it? Tell you I knew?” He shrugged. “It seemed harmless. Why bother?”

They sat there in silence for long enough for Levi to decide Eren was trying to make him forget he existed, or at least fall back asleep.

“Look, come out of there,” he muttered, beckoning. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re young. We’ve been at sea for a quarter of the Flood and before then, someone had you tied up like an animal.” When Eren said nothing, he sighed through his nose. “Tell me, Eren: are you really, honestly so starved for a woman’s company that your eyes have tricked you lusting after a tired old galley dog like me? There are better-looking sailors on this ship- is it because I feed you?”

 _“_ Wha- gods, _no!”_ Eren shouted, sounding angry and embarrassed all at once, and then hid behind the barrel completely.

Levi leaned his head back against the wall. “Is it because of what happened at the market? It’s understandable, having strong feelings for someone who’s saved your life- I wouldn’t blame you if you were confused. I’ve been a soldier, I know how it is.”

Eren began to make what he could only assume were sounds of pure mortification, mumbling bits of foreign tongue interspersed with what sounded like it might be prayer, as well as the occasional,

“this is the _worst,_ ”

and

“save me, _please_ -”

Levi considered him, equal parts puzzled, exasperated, and amused.

“Why did you kiss me, Eren?” he asked, opting for frankness.

Eren let out a growl of humiliated frustration. “Why did people _usually_ kiss you, Levi?” he asked.

Levi thought about it.

“To distract me while they try to pick my pocket,” he mused, “or to try to convince me to forgive them for trying to pick my pocket and let them go, usually while still trying to pick my pocket.”

Eren popped up from behind the barrel to stare at him, and even in the darkness, he could see the look of incredulity he was wearing.

“Oh- and Hanji sometimes kisses me when they get very excited, but I think I’ve broken them of that.”

Eren continued to stare at him. “Wait,” he said, voice reedy like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. “Are you- I can’t- there has to be someone other than Hanji who has kissed you for reasons that aren’t related to robbery.”

He thought about it again.

“Well, before I joined Hanji’s crew, I did have a relationship with a woman- Sylvia,” he admitted, “but as it turns out, she knew I’d been given a sum when I left the militia and was trying to gain my trust so she could rob me, so no, there isn’t anyone. The difference is just that she succeeded, which is why I started working as a galley cook in the first place.”

There was something funny about Eren’s inflection. “Wait,” he started, “so are you confused because I kissed you or because I didn’t try to rob you?”

Levi snorted. “What? Of course you weren’t trying to rob me- where would you go? We’re in the middle of the ocean.”

Eren crept around the barrel towards him, and as he approached, Levi could see that his expression was strange, too. “You’re… actually a bit of a fool, aren’t you?”

“Oi, watch it,” Levi protested, affronted.

Eren kept staring at him. “So you’re a fine cook, a good man, and a fool. The kind who attracts dishonest women everywhere he goes and can’t tell what’s meant by an honest kiss,” he said wonderingly. “Huh. How many times did you fall for it before you learned better?”

He narrowed his eyes at him. “I’m beginning to reconsider my promise not to hurt you,” he warned, but Eren just laughed brightly and crawled closer.

“It never even occurred to you that I would kiss you just for the sake of kissing you, did it?” Eren asked him.

“No, not unless you’re-” He paused, furrowing a brow. “Are you?”

 “If you’re asking if I find men to my liking, yes,” Eren smiled, looking only a little watchful. “And you?”

He frowned. “As much as I do women, which isn’t much, most of the time,” he answered drily. “You’re all terrible.”

“Is that why you work for Hanji?”

“They’re terrible, too,” Levi amended. “Is there a point to this or can I go back to sleep?”

Eren rolled his eyes, placed a hand on Levi’s knee and kissed him again. It was every bit as soft as it had been the first time, but bolder.

After the initial surprise, he gave in and attempted clumsily to reciprocate, at which point Eren broke away with a startled laugh.

“That’s not how- here, I’ll show you,” he snickered, and fitted his hands to Levi’s cheeks, holding him still while he kissed him, lips moving in a slow, consistent rhythm.

Once he felt like he had at least a vague idea of what he was supposed to be doing, Levi buried his fingers in Eren’s hair, jerking back like he’d been burned when Eren groaned.

“Sorry,” he said automatically, and Eren stopped chasing his lips to squint at him.

“What?” he asked, visibly puzzled, and then his eyes widened. “Wait, are you- but you and- how long were you and the woman who robbed you together?”

“Two weeks, before she disappeared,” Levi muttered. “Why?”

Eren looked stunned by the information. “Two weeks?” he crowed incredulously. “When you said she was the only one who’d kissed you without immediately trying to pick your pocket, I’d assumed- wait, you only had your sum from the militia for _two weeks_ before you joined Hanji’s crew?”

“Five,” Levi corrected. “I carried enough coin on me to get by and my room was already paid for the month. I spent three weeks finding work.”

Eren’s laugh did not bode well for his dignity. “It doesn’t take three weeks to find work as a ship’s cook! You spent at least two of those nursing your broken heart, didn’t you?” he accused.

“I was only twenty-five!” Levi argued, feeling defensive.

“I’m twenty-one and already know better!” Eren laughed. “You really _are_ a fool!”

He wanted to be angry, but it was very difficult, faced with the way Eren cupped his face and leaned their foreheads together, laughing like he’d never heard something so delightful.

Levi just glowered at him instead, cheeks hot.

***

“When did you start cooking?”

Eren was lying on the floor with him, his face pillowed on Levi’s arm, his hand exploring the contours of Levi’s waist.

It wasn’t a new occurrence. He’d become quite incurably bold.

Levi put up a good front of being bothered by it, but the truth of the matter was that the warmth of someone else’s skin against his own had awoken an ache he’d nursed for so long it had become something he’d viewed as to be expected.

And the boy was tolerable, he supposed. He’d actually grown begrudgingly fond of him over time.

“In the militia,” he mumbled, fighting drowsiness. He’d become so accustomed to Eren’s proximity that having him near felt like having a wall not just at his back, but at his front. He felt secure, and with security, sleep came easily.

“Oh?”

He hummed, hoping it would be enough and knowing it wouldn’t. “I was used to making do with less. Couldn’t understand why they’d make slop when they had all bits they needed to make proper food. Ended up feeding the whole damn mess of us for all five years of my service.”

Eren laughed softly, worming closer. His fingers drew patterns on Levi’s side. “Did they give you a nickname? Were you Levi _‘Lord of the Mess’_ Galleysown?” he teased.

Levi cracked an eye open to look at him. “Something like that, but they never called me Galleysown- wasn’t a sailor yet. That’s Hanji’s crew’s nickname for me,” he muttered. “They call me the _Galley’s Own_ , the son of the galley, because it’s so damned hot down here coming out is like leaving the womb. It’s like calling you Eren Liarsown on account of you being here because of that hawker at the market. It’s a joke.”

“Jaeger,” Eren said quietly.

He grunted, confused.

“Eren Jaeger,” he repeated. “I’d be Eren _‘Liarsown’_ Jaeger.”

Levi opened both eyes to stare at him through the gloom. “Your family is named?” Eren threw him a puzzled look. “Do you not know how second names are given here?”

Eren’s expression answered before he did.

Levi sighed.

“Named families have status in this part of the world. Anyone born into the family receives that name at birth- it’s why people are so desperate to have a Muse in their homes,” Levi explained. “Why the hawker who kidnapped you almost got away with selling you as one. If your wife or one of your children creates something that might be considered a masterpiece, one of the named families might choose to give your family a name of standing. It’s the barrier coin alone can’t cross- anyone below the gentry takes the name of their father as their second name, and fathered families can’t marry above their station, no matter how rich.”

He could see Eren’s mind working.

“If you don’t have money or a talented child, your other option is to be interesting enough to attract the interest of a patron,” he extrapolated. “Hanji is a _Zoë_ -it’s a second name given to those favoured by the patronage of the Pixis family. Hanji is common-born, but a name of standing and a little money are enough to get what you want, most of the time.”  

Eren hesitated for a moment. “But… what if you don’t have a father? What if your mother…” Levi watched him lick his lips and marveled at how attuned to the delicacy of the question he was.

“What if you’re a whoreson or an unwanted bastard?” Levi supplied indelicately, the corners of his lips quirking up. “Then you’re Fatherless, and until you’re twenty, you can either become a thief, a whore, or a corpse.”

Eren looked horrified.

“If you live until twenty, you can be a thief, a whore, a soldier, a sailor, or a corpse,” Levi continued. “Or a liar, one way or another. The farms and factory owners won’t hire someone who never knew their father- apparently a child needs a man’s guidance to grow up honest,” he droned wryly, “and the ships and militia will only hire you if the registry says you’re old enough to have left your father’s house, so you can either forge family papers to get a fathered man’s job and risk a public flogging and branding if they catch you, or you can find a crooked registry official to vouch for you being older than you are and risk having them blackmail you for the rest of your life- if you’re discovered to have been younger than twenty when you entered the militia or joined a crew, you’ll be barred from the registry and go right back to only being able to be a thief, a whore, or a corpse. The one who registered you will only get a fine for his trouble.” He watched Eren’s expression carefully. “I was a thief before I was a soldier. Never desperate enough to become a liar.”

Eren looked like he couldn’t quite grasp what he was being told. “But… that’s not fair.”

Levi looked at him for a long moment and then rolled over so he wouldn’t have to see that desperately unhappy expression. “Neither is being sold at auction. Nothing’s fair in this world, Eren.”

From behind him, very quietly, he heard,

“You’re fair,”

and just lay there, dumbfounded, as Eren curled against his back and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

“You’ve always been fair to me,” Eren said softly.

Levi had nothing to say.

***

Six months into their voyage, Levi realized something.

The potatoes Eren brought up from the hold should have been sprouting, at the very least.

It had been three months since they’d last made port, and as substantial as the load of food they’d purchased was, the stormy weather and consequently damp air of the hold meant that some of it should’ve been sprouting or spoiling, but every sack Eren brought up was filled with potatoes that looked just as smooth and new as if he’d just dug them out of the earth, and every time Levi asked Eren if there were any odd smells down below, he said there were not.

It was a funny tugging in his gut that convinced him to go down into the hold while Eren relieved himself.

Once he was down there, he found himself just staring.

There was more food than there should have been, though not so much so that it might raise the suspicions of anyone but the man who knew precisely how much they’d had to begin with and how much he cooked with, but not a single onion or potato he saw had a hair or blemish on its skin.

Once he’d climbed back up into the galley, he looked more closely at his cures, his spices, even his preserves.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered, squinting at the edge of a knife he knew he’d nicked all to hell on a mutton bone but never gotten around to getting rid of.

Behind him, Eren chuckled. Levi wheeled around, startled.

“You know, I think the reason you’ve never heard of a Muse to cooks is because your culture doesn’t consider cooking an art,” he said with a stiff smile and watchful eyes. “Where I come from, a Muse can be born to cooks, to archers, to swordsmen, to-” He made a face before saying something in a language Levi didn’t understand. “There isn’t a word for it in your tongue- someone who can make their thoughts understood to people who don’t want to listen.”

Levi stared at him. “I thought you were from the Vikar Gulf?”

Eren just laughed at that. “I was first taken when I was fifteen,” he admitted, “then taken again when I was twenty, from the Gulf. See, where I’m from,” he said with a dry grin, “you can’t buy a woman’s children from her, but you can buy her out of her marriage and marry her instead, making her children your own. My mother ran a lodginghouse- it wasn’t much, but people didn’t come for the beds.”

“They came for the food,” he mumbled, still grappling with the idea that Eren had always been what he’d been billed as, and he was the one that had been wrong.

Eren gave him a heavy-headed nod. “My father travelled, and while he was away, people would come trying to court my mother. By the time I was fifteen, we had a reputation, and we’d always had foreign customers, so when some of-” He paused and licked his lips uncertainly. “-your people came in, I never considered that they might try to kill her. It never even crossed my mind.”

Levi flinched. “And then they sold you in another land because they thought they couldn’t sell you here.” It wasn’t a question.

Eren’s crooked smile was bitter and nothing else. “After they realized she was a cook, they thought they’d made a mistake,” he said quietly. “They almost killed me, but one of them knew a family in the Vikar Gulf- they ended up selling me as a companion to a boy my age. Armin,” he murmured, face softening as he rolled the ‘ _ar’_. “He was a prodigy- is a prodigy. He was allowed to study at his nation’s capital university at only sixteen, but he had a weak personality and his grandfather worried that he might be taken advantage of if he was alone.” He fidgeted, looking down at his hands. “That’s, uh, why I speak your tongue so well. Armin taught me so I could help him practice.”

He’d never even thought to wonder about it, which made him feel a little foolish in hindsight, but he thought he could see the thread of where Eren’s story was going.

“But he was an artist,” he supplied.

Eren’s bittersweet smile confirmed it. “An incredible tactician, a skilled negotiator, a fine liar, and a secret poet,” he sighed. “Another student noticed that his inkwell was lasting longer than it should have, given how much he wrote- when they realized, the university seized me as an asset and had me sold to a foreign merchant- you met him.” The look of profound sadness that swept over him sent Levi’s guts sagging uncomfortably to the left. “I left for a meeting with the faculty and never came back. Armin was the closest thing I had to family for four years, and they’ve probably told him I ran away.”

Levi closed his eyes for a moment. “But, you’d think, as a university-”

“It was a martial school,” Eren answered, shaking his head. “In the Gulf, art is for women, and only men attend university. It’s not like here, where everyone above sea level wants their maids to give them a bastard Muse and nobody bothers to learn how to hold a sword.”

“Wait.” Levi frowned as reality caught up with him. “Wait- so everything I told you, all your questions about Muses- you already knew. You had me running off my mouth about something you knew more about than me,” he accused.

“Uh,” Eren started, “I actually only asked one question, I just- I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

Now that the surreality of it all had started to fade, Levi was beginning to feel genuinely displeased. “You let me spend months beating it into the heads of the crew that you weren’t a Muse!”

“I didn’t think you’d even believe me if I tried to tell you!” Eren cried, hands flying up defensively.

“Bullshit,” Levi snarled, stalking towards him. “You were never going to tell me- half the Flood we’ve been on this ship together, and you never ever thought of it. What, you’ll eat my food, sleep in my kitchen, lie on the damned floor with me in the middle of the night and laugh at my secrets, but you won’t correct me when I’ve been wrong from the very beginning?”

“I didn’t know what you’d _do_ ,” Eren blurted desperately, and then tensed.

Levi stared at him for a long moment and then slapped him upside the head.

“What the hell did you think I was going to do? Lock you in the hold? Throw you overboard?” he demanded, incredulous. “Sell you to a merchant with the rest of the cargo?”

Eren flinched. “Keep me between your knives and spices?” he joked weakly.

Levi smacked him again, incensed. “If I shackled you to my stove, you’d get in my way and do me no good as an apprentice,” he scolded. “Why would I bother? I lie down to sleep at night and wake up to you sidling up beside me- I’m not worried about you running away. I’m not sure I could get rid of you if I wanted to!”

At some point in his ranting, Eren had started to laugh, and he didn’t stop until long after Levi had worn out his generous supply of irritation.

***

Levi’s favourite thing about settling into a harbour for more than an odd day or so was the opportunity to bathe in water that hadn’t been run through one of Hanji’s contraptions and still tasted faintly of the sea.

His second favourite thing was the opportunity to sleep in a proper bed.

Lodginghouses were hardly the height of luxury, but months of sleeping on a wood floor meant the slight give of a cheap mattress felt like heaven to his aching joints.

Now that the earth had finally stopped feeling like it was listing uncontrollably under him, he was fond of the idea of sleeping longer than he had to.

Eren’s hopeful ministrations were making that difficult.

He glared at him through eyes that were barely opened.

 “If you’re going to mount me like an animal before I’m willing to be awake,” Levi grumbled, “could you at least have the courtesy to block the light from the window?”

Eren kissed him on the mouth, then the throat. “Why, so you can sleep through me finally robbing you?” he teased.

Levi grunted. “You already have robbed me,” he groused. “Every morning, I lose at least an hour of sleep to you.”

Eren laughed, and in that moment, he looked nothing at all like a starving animal and everything like a cat that had taken to basking his window and decided, quite resolutely, never to leave.


End file.
